Colorado College News: Historyhttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/cc-rss-news.dot?cat=history,
The 'Right' to Maim: Disablement, Gaza, and Disaster CapitalismWed, 28 Jan 2015 11:15:00 MSThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/
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<p class="MsoNormal">Jasbir K. Puar is Associate Professor of Women&rsquo;s &amp; Gender Studies at Rutgers University.&nbsp; She has also been a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Performance Studies at NYU and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. She received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999 and an M.A. from the University of York, England, in Women&rsquo;s Studies in 1993.</p>History Department Grant Looks at Prisons, PunishmentSat, 06 Dec 2014 09:54:00 MSThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/history-department-grant-looks-at-prisons-punishment
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<p>Colorado College&rsquo;s History Department is launching a new initiative, aimed at exploring how the past informs current efforts to remediate urgent social concerns, and will begin by examining criminality and correction.</p>
<p>CC&rsquo;s new Social Issues and Historical Contexts (SIHC) initiative, funded by a three-year, $200,000 grant from an anonymous donor, recognizes that in recent decades, professional scholarship in history has tended to shift from national, political, and period-specific investigations to transnational and trans-historical issues common to human experience across time and space. <br /> <br /> Embracing this movement, the SIHC program brings together Colorado College students, faculty, staff, and community members in wide-ranging discussions with regional and national experts in public and non-profit agencies. Upcoming speakers include:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Rashad Shabazz</b> of the University of Vermont on race and incarceration:<br /> &ldquo;The Rise of Carceral Power in Chicago: Mapping Race, Place and Sex along the Color Line&rdquo;<br /> 7 p.m., December 8, Gaylord Hall</li>
<li><b>Jonathan Metzl</b> of Vanderbilt University on mental illness and confinement:<br /> &ldquo;Race, Politics and the Criminalization of Mental Illness&rdquo;<br /> 7 p.m., January 28, Gaylord Hall</li>
<li><b>Jasbir Puar</b> of Rutgers University on terrorism, gender, and imprisonment:<br /> &ldquo;The &lsquo;Right&rsquo; to Maim: Disablement, Gaza and Disaster Capitalism&rdquo;<br /> 7 p.m., March 2, Gaylord Hall</li>
</ul>
<p>&ldquo;The&nbsp;History Department here brings the past into conversation with the present in a direct, compelling way,&rdquo; said History Professor Carol Neel, who coordinates the program. &ldquo;Few issues in the United States today are as wrenching as mass incarceration. &nbsp;How did we get to a point at which&nbsp;more than two million Americans, overwhelmingly Americans of color, are in prison? &nbsp;What are the alternatives? &nbsp;How can we follow this issue&mdash; this crisis &mdash; back through historical notions of power, punishment, and the meaning of bodily confinement? Historians work <i>in</i> the past, but they work <i>about</i> the present,&rdquo; Neel said.&nbsp; &ldquo;We encourage understanding and teach compassion to enable constructive response to the difficulties we share with the people of the past.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The SIHC initiative opens new possibilities for linking analysis of the contemporary world with distant points of historical comparison.</p>
<p>SIHC-funded discussions will address crucial contemporary issues through exploration of the historical roots of incarceration as means of discipline, punishment, and social control. Discussions of the sources of criminality, broad human rights considerations in imprisonment, paradigms of mental illness, and critiques of the exercise of public justice, including the death penalty, will be central to the program&rsquo;s teaching and community involvement. An essential component of the Social Issues and Historical Contexts initiative is that it <i>integrates</i> rather than <i>associates</i> contemporary social issues with historical study.</p>
<p>The initiative actively integrates Colorado College in the city and region. By placing prisons and criminality at the center of far-reaching discussions, its aim is to eventually expand the focus to related, regionally significant issues associated with military service and familial disruption, seasonal migrancy, and homelessness. It also opens the way to the exploration of additional issues including media, attitudes toward the environment, public education, and poverty.</p>
<p>The program developers envision an eventual collaboration between CC&rsquo;s History Department and a variety of local non-profits and state and federal institutions, emphasizing the usefulness of historical perspectives for critical review of contemporary attitudes and public policies. And there is a parallel aim: To engage young people with the past by pursuing problems of vital contemporary importance through the lens of time.</p>
<p></p>Alexander Langstaff ’14 Receives Fulbright AwardWed, 30 Apr 2014 17:01:00 MDThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/alexander-langstaff-14-receives-fulbright-award
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<p><strong>Alexander Langstaff &rsquo;14 </strong>has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship scholarship. Langstaff, a history major, will spend the coming academic year teaching English in Georgia, most likely at a regional Georgian university.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve long been fascinated by Georgia and the wider Caucasus. Nestled between Russia and Turkey, the nation&rsquo;s long history at the crossroads of shifting empires remains a deeply contemporary issue and one that I hope to explore,&rdquo; Langstaff said.<br /><br />&ldquo;I first visited Georgia briefly in 2011 and fell in love with the country's rugged beauty and great food and wine. Returning as a Fulbright scholar I look forward to famous Georgian hospitality and the many adventures that will follow in the coming year. In addition to the teaching assistantship, I hope to do research and learn Georgian,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />After his Fulbright year, Langstaff plans on furthering his interest in history and politics through graduate studies.<br /><br />The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program of the United States. The program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others&rsquo; viewpoints and beliefs.</p>Democracy as VoiceThu, 19 Sep 2013 11:08:00 MDThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/democracy-as-voice
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/democracy-as-voice <p>An article by Dennis McEnnerney, associate professor of philosophy, titled "Democracy as Voice: Political Liberalism and Critical Philosophy&nbsp;in Dialogue," was recently published in &ldquo;Political Theory: The State of the Discipline.&rdquo;<br /><br />The book, edited by Evangelia Sembou, director of the Political Thought Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, seeks to identify and examine the problems and challenges that political theory faces today.&nbsp; The book asks what is political theory&rsquo;s importance as a distinctive branch of enquiry? What are its main concerns? It also highlights the fact that political thought operates across disciplinary boundaries and often challenges the boundaries of other disciplines, citing that as one of its greatest strengths.<br /><br />McEnnerney is a specialist in political philosophy and interdisciplinary studies, and has published articles on the history of the concept of resistance in French and Anglo-American political thought; Franz Fanon and the origins of identity politics; and liberal education in the contemporary era. He also served as guest editor for a special volume of &ldquo;Historical Reflections/R&eacute;flexions Historiques&rdquo;<em> </em>on &ldquo;Histories of Resistance.&rdquo;<br /><br />In 2000 McEnnerney co-founded the Association for Political Theory and then served as its first executive co-director for the next decade. He teaches in the Philosophy Department at Colorado College, cross-listing regularly in history and in Feminist and Gender Studies. Among the topics covered in his courses are classical and modern political thought, critical theory, liberal-democratic political philosophy, America pragmatism, and modern and contemporary French thought. He also regularly teaches a section of &ldquo;Freedom and Authority&rdquo; for the First-Year Experience program. &nbsp;He received a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.</p>What to do About Syria?Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:42:00 MDThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/what-to-do-about-syria
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<p>A historian and two political scientists discussed &ldquo;Should the U.S. Use Force in Syria?&rdquo; this week for a standing-room-only crowd in Slocum Commons.<br /><br />History Professor Dennis Showalter and Political Science Professors David Hendrickson and Robert Lee all indicated varying degrees of skepticism about President Barack Obama&rsquo;s request for Congressional approval for a military strike on Syria in response to a deadly nerve gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus.<br /><br />That these three &ldquo;ideologically diverse&rdquo; professors could agree was remarkable, said moderator John Gould, associate professor of political science. &nbsp;The panel fielded questions from students and community members about humanitarian issues, political motivations, and the history of U.S. policy in the Middle East. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rjH1EEGJf8&amp;feature=youtu.be">The event was live-streamed</a> and&nbsp;a KRDO-TV Channel 13 reporter <a href="http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=3495&amp;DateTime=9%2F5%2F2013+4%3A08%3A27+PM&amp;Term=Colorado+College&amp;PlayClip=TRUE">filed this report</a>.</p>A Titanic Clash of MetalThu, 29 Aug 2013 17:46:00 MDThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/a-titanic-clash-of-metal
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/a-titanic-clash-of-metal <p>The newly published &ldquo;Armor and Blood,&rdquo; by Colorado College History Professor Dennis E. Showalter, offers the definitive account of the Battle of Kursk, regarded as the largest tank battle in history, and, according to some historians, the greatest land battle in history. The 1943 epic clash of machines and men matched the indomitable will of the Soviet Red Army against the awesome might of the Nazi Wehrmacht. Readers should be prepared for a wild and riotous ride over the steppes of Russia, with the author, a renowned military historian, as their guide.<br /><br />Showalter&rsquo;s book, published by Random House out this week, is garnering an army of reviews, including a recent full-length review in <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, which states &ldquo;The author's analysis of the Battle of Kursk is first-class,&rdquo; and goes on to say that Showalter &ldquo;provides an excellent analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of both armies. His examination of strategy and tactics is masterly.&rdquo;<br /><br />Showalter was recently<strong> </strong>named a 2013-14 Academic Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. He is past president of the Society for Military History and joint editor of <em>War in History</em>, and has written or edited two dozen books and approximately 150 articles. <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> review, headlined &ldquo;A Titanic Clash of Metal,&rdquo; appeared on Aug. 23, 2013, on page C7.</p>Stuart Hackley ’11 Becomes Second CC Fulbright Winner This YearFri, 26 Apr 2013 11:39:00 MDThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/stuart-hackley-11-becomes-second-cc-fulbright-winner-this-year
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/stuart-hackley-11-becomes-second-cc-fulbright-winner-this-year <p><strong>Stuart Hackley &rsquo;11,</strong> a history major from Conifer, Colo., is the second Colorado College student to receive a Fulbright award this year. Hackley will spend the 2013-14 academic year in Germany, where he will be a teaching assistant in a German high school. He also hopes to take history courses at a local university.<br /><br />Hackley joins <strong>Blaine Carper &rsquo;13 </strong>as this year&rsquo;s Colorado College Fulbright winners. Carper will spend next year teaching English at a Bulgarian high school.<br /><br />Hackley says he is drawn to German culture and history because of its extremes. &ldquo;Germany has been responsible for some of history's most beautiful art and some of its most horrific wars. I'm especially interested in the way all of these conflicting historical phenomena work their way into modern German national identity,&rdquo; he says.<br /><br />Hackley, who has a love of German philosophy and language, plans to get a Ph.D. in history with an emphasis on 19<sup>th</sup>-century Germany. His senior project focused on Friedrich&nbsp;Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill.&nbsp; He studied German at CC and at a summer immersion program, and has spent time backpacking in Germany and Austria. He also spent a year in western China, where he taught English at a small university.<br /><br />The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to &ldquo;increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.&rdquo;&nbsp;It operates in more than 140 countries worldwide.</p>Dennis Showalter Named a 2013-14 Academic FellowThu, 18 Apr 2013 15:51:00 MDThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/dennis-showalter-named-a-2013-14-academic-fellow
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/dennis-showalter-named-a-2013-14-academic-fellow <p>CC History Professor Dennis Showalter has been named a 2013-14 Academic Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. Showalter will travel to Israel in June for an intensive course in terrorism studies, and in particular, how democracies can defeat the worldwide terrorist threat. <br /><br />The FDD Academic Fellows program provides a 10-day learning experience to U.S. &ndash;based teaching and research professionals to provide them with cutting edge information about defeating terrorist groups.&nbsp; The 2013 program, which will be conducted at Tel Aviv University from June 16 to June 25, includes lectures by academics, military and intelligence officials, and diplomats from Israel, Jordan, India, and the United States. It also includes hands-on experience through visits to police, customs and immigration facilities, military bases, and border zones to learn the practical side of deterring and defeating terrorists. The ultimate goal is to educate participants about the threat of terrorism and how democratic states combat it.</p>
<p>Showalter is past president of the Society for Military History and joint editor of <em>War in History</em>. He has written or edited two dozen books and approximately 150 articles. Recent monographs include &ldquo;The Wars of German Unification,&rdquo; &ldquo;Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Hitler&rsquo;s Panzers.&rdquo; He joined the Colorado College faculty in 1969, and specializes in modern European history and comparative military history.</p>Four Faculty Members Receive Tenure; Anthropologist Granted Emerita StatusWed, 27 Feb 2013 17:55:00 MSThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/four-faculty-members-receive-tenure-anthropologist-granted-emerita-status
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/four-faculty-members-receive-tenure-anthropologist-granted-emerita-status <p>Four Colorado College assistant professors have been granted tenure and promotion to associate professor, beginning with the 2013-14 academic year. President Jill Tiefenthaler commended each for their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service, noting that they are dedicated members of the Colorado College faculty. &nbsp;Additionally, one faculty member has been granted emeritus status. Those receiving tenure are:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://sites.coloradocollege.edu/manderson/">Megan Anderson</a>, assistant professor of geology. Anderson started at CC in 2005 after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and her B.A. from Carleton College. One of her recent articles, &ldquo;Crustal Structure of the Eastern Sierras Pampeanas of Argentina Using High Frequency Local Receiver Functions&rdquo; was published in <em>Tectonophysics</em>. She teaches Catastrophic Geology, Geologic Evolution of South America, Introductory Geophysics, and Regional Geology. Anderson has received support from the National Science Foundation and contributes to the First-Year Experience program.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="/academics/dept/english/people/profile.dot?person=hayward_steven_frank">Steven Hayward</a>, assistant professor of English. Hayward started at CC in 2008 after teaching at John Carroll University. Hayward, who received a B.A. from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from York University, is the author of &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Be Afraid,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Secret Mitzah of Lucio Burke,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Buddha Stevens and Other Stories.&rdquo; He teaches Introductory and Advanced Fiction Workshops, Introduction to Poetry, Introduction to Canadian Literature, Introduction to Shakespeare, and Major British Writers. He serves as co-director of the Visiting Writers Series and as liaison to KRCC, Colorado College&rsquo;s NPR-member station.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="/academics/dept/environmentalprogram/people/profile.dot?person=kummel_miroslav">Miroslav Kummel</a>, assistant professor of the environmental program. Kummel received a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His publications include &ldquo;The Local Climate-Development Nexus: Jatropha and Smallholder Adaptation in Tamil Nadu, India,&rdquo; published in<em> Climate and Development</em>, and &ldquo;How the Aphids Got Their Spots: Predation Drives Self-Organization of Aphid Colonies in a Patchy Habitat,&rdquo; co-authored with CC colleagues and forthcoming in <em>Oikos</em>. Kummel teaches Ecology and the Environment, Water, Environmental Inquiry, and Introduction to Global Climate Change.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="/academics/dept/history/people/profile.dot?person=murphy_jane_h">Jane Murphy</a>, assistant professor of history. Murphy received a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her peer-reviewed publications include &ldquo;Locating the Sciences in Eighteenth-Century Egypt&rdquo; in the <em>British Journal for the History of Science</em> and &ldquo;Ahmad Damanhuri (1689-1778) and the Utility of Early-Modern Expertise in Ottoman Egypt&rdquo; in <em>Osiris</em>. Murphy teaches Magic, Science, and Religion in the Mediterranean, Civilization in the Middle East, Imagining Jordan: Myth, History and Identity, and Islamic Empires and Their Discontents.</li>
</ul>
<p>Additionally, <a href="/academics/dept/anthropology/people/profile.dot?person=watkins_laurel_j">Laurel Watkins</a> was granted emerita status, becoming Adjunct Emerita Associate Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics. Watkins, who has 33 years of service at Colorado College, is an internationally renowned expert on Kiowa language. She serves as a linguistic consultant to both the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma Department of Anthropology Native Language Program. In addition to publishing numerous articles, Watkins authored &ldquo;A Grammar of Kiowa&rdquo; and co-authored &ldquo;Mirrors and Microparameters: Phrase Structure Beyond Free Word Order.&rdquo; Her ongoing research on Kiowa and Tewa languages reflects her enduring fascination with Native American languages.</p>CC Alumna Featured in Ken Burns DocumentaryThu, 15 Nov 2012 11:27:00 MSThttp://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/cc-alumna-featured-in-ken-burns-documentary
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/cc-alumna-featured-in-ken-burns-documentary <p>Ken Burns&rsquo;s latest documentary, &ldquo;The Dust Bowl,&rdquo; which he calls the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, premiers Sunday and Monday, Nov. 18-19 on PBS (8 p.m./7 p.m. Central) and includes an interview with <strong>Dorothy Christenson Williamson &rsquo;34</strong>. Williamson, a Colorado College history major, was a social worker with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and worked in Prowers County, Colo., on the western edge of the Dust Bowl.<br /><br />Williamson, who turns 100 next month, recalls visiting the hard-hit residents and sitting across from them at their kitchen tables. &ldquo;They couldn&rsquo;t believe what was happening to them. It wasn&rsquo;t anything that anyone had experienced before,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was black, black, black everywhere. If you left your shoes at night and didn&rsquo;t turn them upside down, they would be full of sand in morning."<br /><br />She appreciates the fact that she is, in some way, a part of history. &nbsp;&ldquo;I was always glad I majored in history,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It gave me lifelong interests that I still have today, in reading and such. It&rsquo;s interesting when I look back on my life; interesting to have lived through those times.&rdquo;<br /><br />Her daughters, <strong>Karen Williamson Andrews &rsquo;62</strong> and <strong>Kristin Williamson Adcock &rsquo;67</strong>, and granddaughter <strong>Amelia Adcock &rsquo;00</strong> are all CC graduates, as was her brother, the late <strong>Alton (&ldquo;Chris&rdquo;) Christenson &rsquo;35</strong>. Williamson will be featured in the December issue of the <em>Bulletin</em>, CC&rsquo;s alumni magazine.</p>